Gringa (18 page)

Tonio liked for Abilene to meet him at the practice ring at five, when he rode, and she liked to do so. Tonio and his horse were one as he rode. The peccary that lived in the forest thicket always trotted out to join Tonio on his ride. It went round and round the ring with him. When Tonio sat on a bench afterwards, the peccary came to rub against his leg like a cat. Tonio had a monkey that he let run free too. Usually it stayed away from people and mocked them from up in the trees, or across the mesh roof of the aviary. Sometimes it went into the guardhouse with Sapo and other men who gathered there. When the phone rang and Sapo went to answer it, the monkey went crazy, screeching and banging his ear. When Tonio was around, though, the monkey pranced and preened in his sight, begging for his approval. There was a little wild cat, too, caught not long after Abilene first came to the ranch. It was an onza, a jaguarundi, caught in the thicket and chained to the front of the guardhouse. The monkey got just beyond the reach of the leash and screamed at the cat. Abilene thought Tonio kept these animals around as a way to say to the natural world: I am in charge. For her there was something wonderful about the presence of animals turned from the wild by his affection.

“Come along, we'll walk in the thicket,” Tonio said one afternoon, that first year. He had been riding in a silvery sweat suit, to lose weight. He stripped to his soaking trousers and took Abilene by the arm, his riding whip in his other hand. They walked in leisurely pace around the hacienda wall, medieval with its gargoyles and iron spires, down the smoothed road ribbed by palms and jacarandas, leading to the hangar and airstrip. Along the way, Tonio flicked his whip at a darting snake, at a fat bug on a leaf, at the ground. By the time he and Abilene were thirty feet into the thicket they were in another world. They strolled down an aisle deeply shaded by trees and shrubs. Their arms were brushed by drooping branches that shone as if with polish. They went past tall shrubs, sweet of scent and tangled, with large heavy leaves. Abilene heard cries and rustles, sounds unlike those of the more open grounds; she hoped her shudders were unnoticed by Tonio, who walked with his chest high, a slight smile on his lips, as if he were going to meet a lover. Abilene stayed close to him. Now and then he poked through a tangle of brush with his crop.

They walked in silence, and then Tonio abruptly turned around. He almost caused Abilene to lose her footing, but she regained her balance and turned back to face the way they had come, as Tonio had done, and she saw light as at the end of a tunnel. They were shrouded in a tomb of foliage. Abilene felt frightened, though she knew it was silly. Nothing could happen with Tonio there. Tonio let his whip fall to the ground and took her against him. He was slick with sweat; he smelled of horses. He kissed Abilene eagerly and long. Abilene responded, but was aware that her senses were played upon by the thicket as much as by Tonio. Tonio unbuttoned her blouse and pressed his flesh against hers; they made a sticky popping sound as they slid apart. He slid her pants down and bent slightly to come up under her. She felt impaled and ecstatic, thrown upward by his swift thrusts.

He said, “If I left you now, bears would come from the north, or puma, eh, beasts of the night, at the smell of woman.” He was delighted at her bewilderment; she was out of focus, as in a dream. He threw his arm across her shoulders all the while they walked back to the road, and he stopped once to murmur in her ear, “I'd never feed you to them, I'd eat you myself first.”

They played Ping-Pong in the bunkhouse. Putting the balls away, Abilene found herself almost into the face of an opossum hanging by its feet. Tonio came behind her and put his arms around her middle. “There is a local folk belief that says the male fucks the female's nose,” he said. He pointed at a place, barely discernible in the wasted hide. “What other paired opening exists for his forked penis?” She asked him if he was kidding. “I haven't the time for jokes,” he said. But in his room he jabbed at her ears, her nose, her mouth with his erect penis; she was laughing so hard she gagged, and tears sprang to her eyes. Soon after, a neighboring rancher, Michael Sage, came for lunch, and Tonio told him how gullible Abilene was. She was embarrassed and resentful until she saw how surprised Sage seemed to be. The rancher was studying Tonio, truly perplexed. Tonio cut straight across his guest's gaze to look at Abilene with open fondness.

“I'll do anything for you,” she gasped that night. She had fallen into a dark thick fairyland, and he was the Prince.

He answered softly. “Wear a collar? Fuck a dog?”

They laughed at this silly notion, but she shivered in her sleep that night, dreamed of cats on chains, and woke cold and startled.

“Who else, Abby? Who else came? Only hunters, to kill things?”

“Oh no. There were spelunkers, exploring caves. The region is full of them. And there are birders. And a wonderful man, an archeologist, Martin Dufour, from Switzerland. He spent five years coming in the winters to excavate just across the river from the ranch.”

“Did you go to see?”

“Yes, I went. To the dig, it's called. But it was awfully dull stuff. They brush away the dirt, tiny tiny bits of it at a time, in the hot hot sun. I tried to be interested—I liked Martin, and it would have been something to do—but it gives me a headache to go out there. I liked it better when Martin came to dinner and told us about his travels all over the world. He had been to India and China, Indonesia and Japan. He and Tonio used to talk about outfitting a boat to explore the ocean for a year at a time!”

“Wouldn't that be something? Oh, I want to go everywhere and see everything, too. You realize, we could live anywhere we wanted, Mommy and I. We could move every year, but instead we stay here.”

“Your mother has made her life here. Daniel, and her work. She has to work!”

“Oh no she doesn't. My father sends us money, lots of it. Do you think Daniel would pay for the lycée?”

“Your mother is a very good photographer. I'm sure she is paid well.”

“My father pays,” Pola said stubbornly. “She hates him, but she takes his money.”

“He's your father. He should help support you.”

“Oh never mind! Abby, do you remember that winter in Zihuatenejo?”

“Of course. The people in town called us witches.”

“And the bloody turtle—”

“Why yes, I do remember that. And that poor woman who drowned. What about Lotus? Do you remember her too?”

“She could tell fortunes with cards,” Pola said. “And read palms.” She seemed suddenly sly. “She said my life line was very short—”

“What a terrible thing to have said! You were only—what?—nine years old?” Hovering on the brink of pubescence, bristling with indignation. She still had a child's poochy stomach, pale nubs of breasts. She could not go by the tin mirror on the door without checking her progress.

“Would it have been better if she lied?” Pola asked.

“That's nonsense to tell a little girl. It's a good thing your mother didn't know about it. Besides, Lotus was hardly more than a girl herself.”

“She was my first true friend, and I've never quit wondering what happened to her.”

“She probably went home and back to school. Maybe she has her first job, or maybe she's married.”

Pola looked at Abilene with outright disgust. “Don't be silly, she'd never be like that.”

“She has to be and do something!”

Pola knew the answer to that. “Not if she's dead.”

Abilene hadn't meant to go to Zi, hadn't even known it existed until Mickey mentioned it to her on their way down to Acapulco. She had been so upset when Tonio said he was going to Europe. He had told her the same weekend Isabel came for a visit. Isabel called Tonio a “stick in the dirt,” and shaved hash off a gooey ball for them to smoke. The trip to Acapulco was her idea, and Tonio approved, but in the end only Abilene and Mickey went. Isabel had to make a living; she realized it once she was straight again.

On the way to Acapulco their first-class bus caught on fire, and they had to file out onto the side of the road. The baggage was smoldering. They stood off the highway and watched peasants stream down over the hills as though a bugle had been blown. The bus driver threw all the damaged packages and suitcases onto the ground; from somewhere buckets of water were hauled. In half an hour the driver told them to get back on the bus.

“What about our things?” Abilene asked. Mickey pressed her lips with his fingertips. “Look,” he said. “Nobody is saying anything. Everyone knows better.” It was incomprehensible. Through the window of the bus, Abilene looked back on peasants scrambling in the blackened suitcases. She saw a large fat woman holding up a lady's fancy bra. In Acapulco the bus company gave them each forty dollars.

They stayed in the same little hotel where they had stayed the first time, when they came down from Austin to see Tonio fight. Mickey had friends there. Some days they stayed up in the hills above the strip with them all day and never went out until dark. The boys liked to talk about women. They liked to list their attributes, their eyes and legs, their nice bottoms and breasts, the way they pretended not to want it, or the way they were so hot. Abilene, and sometimes there were other young women, simply turned away to something else, a magazine or a newspaper on the table, or looked at the hot clear sky through a window.

Nights they danced. Abilene danced all the dances, with Mickey and his friends, and sometimes with the local boys, who said they went to college but didn't like it. She wanted them while she was dancing; she imagined going home with each of them. It was quite enough to think about it; she hadn't sunk so low. Still when a young man told her she was a sweet papaya she almost let him know she understood. She liked to dance the line, too, with boys whose shirts were unbuttoned, with music blaring, and outside on the street, a smell of vomit and decaying fruit.

One night in their room Mickey said, “You really don't know what effect you have on me, do you?” They had been fucking once a night, like an old husband and wife. “You dance like the cheapest whore, you know that, Abelita? It's a miracle you aren't carried off and raped in the streets. You don't think I could do anything, do you? But then, it wouldn't really be rape, would it?” She refused to let him bait her. She undressed down to her panties and pulled on a dirty tee-shirt from off the floor while he blabbed on and on. He was running out of energy. He whispered throatily, “You do a hundred things a day to make me crazy. Do you think I didn't see you today at Marcela's, folding the wash? I saw how you handled her brother's shirts, like he was your lover!” Mickey's eyes met hers. “What will you do for me?”

The shirts had been warm, had smelled of limes.

What struck her was his vulnerability, like her own, and his bravado. She disliked him terribly just then. She could forgive the chavos at the dance hall, fingering their balls and purring; they were who they were, pure and simple. But Mickey. He had a lot of experience at other things. He had an education. He thought he was something special, badly estimated by the world. He wanted her to love him instead of Tonio, what madness! She wouldn't have touched him to save his life right then. She would have gone with one of his Acapulco friends, he was right about that; she would gladly have floated on their seas of vanity. But Mickey's lust was sordid. It accused her. It was too close to home.

He woke up in the middle of the night. She thought it was to make love, and she was prepared to do so rather than quarrel. But he only wanted to talk!

“You're kidding yourself,” he started in. She laughed. Who else was doing that? (Who wasn't?) He went on. “You're not entitled to anything so special.” She turned away from him and his nonsense. Jesus, it was the middle of the night! He leaned down and touched her back, she could feel his hot breath on her shoulder. “What I like is watching you undo yourself,” he said. It made some impression on her, though she never let him know.

She went to Zi the next day. She left while Mickey was in the shower.

Zihuatenejo was a mere village around a protected bay. She went to the market to ask about rooms, and there met Adele. Adele took her up on the hillside to her white stucco house. On the way she told about a July when she had had her palapa poles blown away in a hurricane. When dawn had come, she had seen a village two feet deep in mud. Sloshing through it to the bus, she had seen a baby pig float by, and some cats. Pola said, “I don't remember that, do I?” Adele smiled fondly. There had been a time pre-Pola.

They found the winter sublime in Zi. They got up lazy and drank coffee thick with condensed sweet milk. They spent hours on their porch, and more at the beach. They paid fifteen dollars for a burro, from the landlord's son, and another fifty pesos a month for him to feed the animal. He was always looking for a deal for the gringas. He trudged up the long rocky path carrying fake artifacts, polished stones, once some duck eggs, oysters, an ancient tin of Bufferin, string, buttons, empty film cases, ballpoint pens, an Italian dictionary, candles. He offered to sell them dope. They ignored the offer of marijuana and bought everything else. Sometimes they paid too much, but usually not. It was a diversion. They set the objects around on windowsills and in the corners of the house, like charms. They woke up every day and waited for something to happen. Sometimes Pola went down into the village to buy sweet cakes or hard rolls for breakfast; after they ate, they fussed with one another's hair and talked. The child's hair was so thick and curly her face was waiflike at its heart. She was moody, often tearful, sometimes giddy. She liked to sit nearby while Abilene and Adele talked about men, photography, gossip from the city, plans for the day, life in general.

Adele told about her own childhood. She had been a French war orphan (Jewish parents), brought to the bright state of California by an officer's family. No one had ever talked to her about the war, the camps. When she was fourteen her adopted mother had a child of her own, quite unexpectedly, and Adele was transformed in function from child to unpaid au pair. At seventeen she met Pola's father, an ambitious and dramatic immigrant who was already making his first film. Abilene found it all passionate and fascinating; it shocked her to realize, eventually, that Adele had some self-pity about the course of her life. Still, she seemed stable, perhaps especially because of the rootlessness of her life. She was affectionate to Abilene, got her to talk about herself, to talk, in general, more than she ever had to anyone. But with her daughter, Adele was strangely brittle. Of course Pola was disturbing, with her startling eyes and hair, her old-young look. She looked as if she had seen too much too soon.